Reimagining History through Film
The Russian and Post Soviet Studies program at William and Mary invites you to our
REIMAGINING HISTORY THROUGH FILM: Evgeny Tsymbal’s Film and Lecture Series
Events are free and open to the public!
RED ZION (Dir. Evgeny Tsymbal 2006) November 5, 5 pm., Washington 201 
To discourage Jews from immigrating to Palestine during the 1920s, the USSR established agricultural collectives in the fertile lands north of the Black Sea. Director Evgeny Tsymbal returns with a compelling documentary about the rise and fall of the Soviet Jewish Autonomous Region in Crimea, featuring newly released archival newsreels.
DZIGA AND HIS BROTHERS (Dir. Evgeny Tsymbal 2003) November 8, 6 pm., Washington 201
The fascinating and tumultuous lives of Mikhail, Boris and Denis Kaufman (better known as Dziga Vertov) are the focus of this powerful documentary. Using rare archival footage from Russian state film archives and private collections, the brothers' lives and art are traced from Bialystok to Moscow, Paris, and Hollywood.
From the Philadephia Weekly: The Coppola clan has nothing on the Kaufmans, a family of geniuses to rival the Tenenbaums, even if their names may not immediately click in your head. Practitioners of impossible shots, editing/camera tricks and improvisation in general, brothers David, Moisey and Boris get highlighted in Yevgeni Tsymbal's succinct Russian doc. David Kaufman became Dziga Vertov, a last name he chose because it was Polish for "spinning top"-which is a perfectly apt description of his 1929 opus Man With the Movie Camera. If Movie Camera's not the best documentary ever made, it's at least the most visually ravishing. (As pointed out frequently enough to diminish its merits, the post-MTV filmmaker generation-and Leni Riefenstahl-would be nowhere without it.) The other two brothers went in different directions, though Moisey worked alongside Dziga on Movie Camera before their estrangement turned him into one of Dziga's doc-making rivals. (From the clips we see, he's just about his equal, too.) Boris, meanwhile, spread the style westward, first to France to work with Jean Vigo (L'Atalante), then to America, garnering him both an Oscar for shooting On the Waterfront and frequent employment by Sidney Lumet.
Public Lecture: SEER OR CINEMATOGRAPHER?: THE MAKING OF ANDREI TARKOVSKY's STALKER November 9, 5 pm., Blow Hall 332
Russian Filmmaker and Historian Evgeny Tsymbal, a renowned filmmaker who started his career working as director's assistant on Andrey Tarkovsky’s The Stalker, challenges the notion of Tarkovsky as a Romantic, spiritual genius-prophet and offers his own iterpretation of the filmmaker’s identity-- a collaborative, process-based, slightly conceptual artist more amenable to an age of relational aesthetics.
EVGENY TSYMBAL began his work at the Mosfilm Studios in Moscow in the 1970's and worked in production and as an assistant director in films by Andrei Tarkovsky. Commencing his own film career with a variety of short films, Tsymbal acheived critical acclaim with the prize-winning short Defence Council Sedov (46 mins) and continued this success with The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon (1990). His recent work includes documentary films Dziga and his Brothers (2002) and Red Zion (2006).
In addition to directing, Tsymbal has continued his work as a scriptwriter, historian and journalist publishing articles in journals including Sight and Sound, Premier, Artes, New Statesman and Chaplin.
Sponsored by
The College of Arts and Sicences, The Russian and Post-Soviet Studies Program, The Literary and Cultural Studies Program, and The Film Studies Program
